the whole world burns

Archive for category 'feminism'

Feminists have pointed out that women are inculcated in a culture where they must buy products that make them young, beautiful, and attractive to men, and they often advocate rejecting the consumer culture as a way of fighting patriarchal domination. We all know the theories purporting the unholy fusion of capitalism and the patriarchy: men control high power positions in capitalism and use sexual insecurity of women created by the patriarchal system to exploit and make a profit. But what happens to this feminist theory of gender role construction when men are sold the same, or very similar, bill of goods? Is patriarchy then dominating itself? Or is capitalism really the only ultimate dominator?

[Alison Bechdel's strip] popularized what is now known as the Bechdel Test, also named the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel's Law. Bechdel credits Liz Wallace for the test. The test appears in a 1985 strip entitled The Rule in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

It has to have at least two women in it, who

talk to each other about,

something besides a man.

You would be amazed, once you start watching for it, how very very rare this kind of scene is in movies, violent and non-.